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Today, the Bible is available in many versions across the English-speaking world, and has been translated into nearly every language on Earth, including the current translation into a recently-created language from the fictional world of [[Star Trek]], [[Klingon]]. [http://www.kli.org/wiki/index.php?Klingon%20Bible%20Translation%20Project]  The past two decades saw the emergence of [[internet]] use; the creation of the Bible as a software program was inevitable, and several, such as [[E-Sword]] and Theophilos, are available at no cost with a wealth of Bible-study material as well.
 
Today, the Bible is available in many versions across the English-speaking world, and has been translated into nearly every language on Earth, including the current translation into a recently-created language from the fictional world of [[Star Trek]], [[Klingon]]. [http://www.kli.org/wiki/index.php?Klingon%20Bible%20Translation%20Project]  The past two decades saw the emergence of [[internet]] use; the creation of the Bible as a software program was inevitable, and several, such as [[E-Sword]] and Theophilos, are available at no cost with a wealth of Bible-study material as well.
 +
 +
=== Bible criticism ===
 +
The traditional view of the Mosaic authorship of the Torah came under sporadic criticism from medieval scholars including [[Isaac ibn Yashush]], [[Abraham ibn Ezra]], Bonfils of Damascus and bishop [[Tostatus]] of Avila, who pointed to passages such as the description of the death of Moses in Deuteronomy as evidence that some portions, at least, could not have been written by Moses.
 +
In the 17th century [[Thomas Hobbes]] collected the current evidence and became the first scholar to conclude outright that Moses could not have written the bulk of the Torah. Shortly afterwards the philosopher [[Baruch Spinoza]] published a unified critical analysis, demonstrating that the problematic passages were not isolated cases that could be explained away one by one, but pervasive throughout the five books, concluding that it was "clearer than the sun at noon that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses…." Despite determined opposition from the Church, both Catholic and Protestant, the views of Hobbes and Spinoza gained increasing acceptance amongst scholars.
 +
 +
=== The Documentary Hypothesis ===
 +
Having established the hypothesis that Moses had not written the Pentateuch, attention next turned to the question of who had. Independent but nearly simultaneous proposals by H. B. Witter, [[Jean Astruc]], and J. G. Eichhorn separated the Pentateuch into two original documentary components, both dating from after the time of Moses. Others hypothesized the presence of two additional sources. The four documents were given working titles: J (or [[Yahwist]]), E ([[Elohist]]), P ([[Priestly source|Priestly]]), and D ([[Deuteronomist]]), each was discernable by its own characteristic language, and each, when read in isolation, presented a unified, coherent narrative.
 +
 +
Subsequent [[Higher criticism|scholars]], notably [[Eduard Reuss]], [[Karl Heinrich Graf]] and [[Wilhelm Vatke]], turned their attention to the order in which the documents had been composed (which they deduced from internal clues) and placed them in the context of a theory of the development of ancient Israelite religion, suggesting that much of the Laws and the narrative of the Pentateuch were unknown to the Israelites in the time of Moses. These were synthesized by [[Julius Wellhausen]] (1844-1918), who suggested an historical framework for the composition of the documents and their redaction (combination) into the final document known as the Pentateuch. According to contemporary Torah scholar [[Richard Elliott Friedman]], Wellhausen's model of the [[documentary hypothesis]] continues to dominate the field of biblical scholarship: "To this day, if you want to disagree, you disagree with Wellhausen. If you want to pose a new model, you compare its merits with those of Wellhausen's model."<ref>Richard Elliott Friedman, "Who Wrote the Bible?,” HarperSanFrancisco, 1997 (2nd edition).</ref>
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The documentary hypothesis is important in the field of Biblical studies not only because it claims that the Torah was written by different people at different times - generally long after the events it describes. <ref>Joel Rosenberg, 1984 "The Bible: Biblical Narrative" in Barry Holtz, ed ''Back to the Sources'' New York: Summit Books p. 36; Nahum Sarna, 1986 ''Understanding Genesis'' New York:Schocken Books p. xxi-xxiii</ref> It also proposed what was at the time a radically new way of reading the Bible. Many proponents of the documentary hypothesis view the Bible more as a body of literature than a work of history, believing that the historical value of the text lies not in its account of the events that it describes, but in what critics can infer about the times in which the authors lived  (as critics may read ''[[Hamlet]]'' to learn about seventeenth-century England, but will not read it to learn about seventh-century Denmark).
 +
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=== Modern developments ===
 +
The critical analysis of authorship now encompasses every book of the bible. Every book in turn has been hypothesized to bear traces of multiple authorship, even the [[book of Obadiah]], which is only a single page. In some cases the traditional view on authorship has been overturned; in others, additional support, at least in part has been found.
 +
 +
The development of the hypothesis has not stopped with Wellhausen. Wellhausen's hypothesis, for example, proposed that the four documents were composed in the order J-E-D-P, with P, containing the bulk of the Jewish law, dating from the post-Exilic [[Second Temple]] period (i.e., after 515 BC);<ref>Wellhausen adopted the idea of a post-Exilic date for P from [[Eduard Reuss]].</ref> but the contemporary view is that P is earlier than D, and that all four books date from the [[First Temple]] period (i.e., prior to 587 BC).<ref>Although the ''bulk'' of all four documents date from before 587 BC, the strand of D known as Dtr2 dates from the following Exilic period.</ref>
 +
 +
The documentary hypothesis has come into question in recent decades, at least in the four-document version advanced by Wellhausen and refined by later scholars such as [[Martin Noth]] (who in 1943 provided evidence that Deuteronomy plus the following six books make a unified history from the hand of a single editor), [[Harold Bloom]], [[Frank Moore Cross]] and [[Richard Elliot Friedman]]. The direction of this criticism is to question the existence of separate, identifiable documents, positing instead that the biblical text is made up of almost innumerable strands so interwoven as to be hardly untangleable &mdash; the J document, in particular, has been subjected to such intense dissection that it seems in danger of disappearing.
 +
 +
Although Biblical archeology has confirmed the existence of many people, places, and events mentioned in the Bible[http://Christiananswers.net/archeology], many critical scholars have argued that the Bible be read not as an accurate historical document, but rather as a work of literature and theology that often draws on historical events &mdash; and often draws on non-Hebrew mythology &mdash; as primary source material. For these critics the Bible reveals much about the lives and times of its authors. Whether the ideas of these authors have any relevance to contemporary society is left to clerics and adherents of contemporary religions to decide.
  
 
==Bible Versions==
 
==Bible Versions==

Revision as of 09:30, March 20, 2007

The Holy Bible, opened to the Book of Isaiah.

The Bible, or the Holy Scriptures, is the collection of texts sacred to Judaism and Christianity, and consists of two parts: the thirty-nine books of the Jewish faith known as the Tanakh, or the Old Testament; and the twenty-seven books and letters of the New Testament of the Christian faith. Originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, the Bible has been translated in more than two thousand languages; in terms of sales and distribution the Bible is the most-widely distributed, largest-selling book in history; the over-all influence and impact the Bible has had on literature, culture, and history is beyond calculation.

Name

The word "Bible" had its origins in the Greek word biblos, meaning book. The ancient Phoenician seaport of Byblos was so-named as a result of the trade and manufacture of papyrus and writing-related material, and the growth of Christianity by the 2nd century, A.D. led to an outpouring of the Scriptures on papyrus scrolls, so much so that during this time the early Christians began calling them by the Latin term la Biblia, "the Books". (Unger, pg 144)

Books of the Bible

The Old Testament

Old Testament layout
Jewish Christian
Genesis Genesis
Exodus Exodus
Leviticus Leviticus
Numbers Numbers
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy
Joshua Joshua
1st Samuel Judges
2nd Samuel Ruth
1st Kings 1st Samuel
2nd Kings 2nd Samuel
Isaiah 1st Kings
Jeremiah 2nd Kings
Ezekiel 1st Chronicles
The Minor Prophets 2nd Chronicles
Psalms Ezra
Proverbs Nehemiah
Job Esther
Song of Songs Job
Ruth Psalms
Lamentations Proverbs
Ecclesiastes Ecclesiastes
Esther Song of Solomon
Daniel Isaiah
Ezra Jeremiah
Chronicles Lamentations
Jeremiah Ezekiel
Ezekiel Daniel
The Minor Prophets
Dates of each Book
Old Testament New Testament
Genesis, 1440-1400 B.C. Matthew, A.D. 60-65
Exodus, 1440-1400 B.C. Mark, A.D. 60-65
Leviticus, 1440-1400 B.C. Luke, A.D. 58-65
Numbers, 1440-1400 B.C. John, A.D. 95
Deuteronomy, 1440-1400 B.C. Acts, A.D. 58-65
Joshua, 1400-1360 B.C. Romans, A.D. 58
Judges, c. 1020 B.C. 1st Corinthians, A.D. 57
Ruth, c. 1090 B.C. 2nd Corinthians, A.D. 57
1st Samuel Galatians, A.D. 56
2nd Samuel Ephesians, A.D. 62-63
1st Kings, 609-600 B.C. Philippians, A.D. 58-60
2nd Kings, 609-600 B.C. Colosians, A.D. 61-63
1st Chronicles, c. 400 B.C. 1st Thessalonians, A.D. 52
2nd Chronicles, c. 400 B.C. 2nd Thessalonians, A.D. 53
Ezra, c. 400 B.C. 1st Timothy, A.D. 62-65
Nehemiah, c. 400 B.C. 2nd Timothy, A.D. 65-66
Esther, 464-425 B.C. Titus, A.D. 65
Job, 1440-1400 B.C. Philemon, A.D. 65
Psalms, 1004-965 B.C. Hebrews, A.D. 63-64
Proverbs, 965-925 B.C. James, A.D. 63-64
Eccleisiastes, 965-925 B.C. 1st Peter, A.D. 64
Song of Solomon, 965-925 B.C. 2nd Peter, A.D. 65
Isaiah, 785-697 B.C. 1st John, A.D. 90-100
Jeremiah, 587-538 B.C. 2nd John, A.D. 90-100
Lamentations, 587-538 B.C. 3rd John, A.D. 90-100
Ezekiel, 592-572 B.C. Jude, c. A.D. 70-75
Daniel, 539-520 B.C. Revelation, A.D. 96-98
Hosea, 753-731 B.C.
Joel, 835-796 B.C.
Amos, 787-747 B.C.
Obadiah, 848-841 B.C.
Jonah, 771-754 B.C.
Micah, 715-687 B.C.
Nahum, 661-612 B.C.
Habbakuk, 625-608 B.C.
Zephaniah, 621-608 B.C.
Haggai, 520 B.C.
Zechariah, 520 B.C.
Malachi, 455 B.C.

The Old Testament, also called the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, consists of thirty-nine books. The books themselves were originally written in Hebrew, and later on in the Aramaic language of Palestine; the Greek language version written after the conquest of Alexander the Great is known as the Septuagint. Melito, a bishop of Sardis in Lydia (in what is now Turkey), is said to have coined the phrase Old Testament about A.D. 170. The Old Testament is divided in three parts (hence, "Tanakh") within the Jewish community: the Torah ("Law"), or Pentateuch, the five books of Moses; Nevi'im ("Prophets"), and Ketuvim ("Writings,” or Hagiographa). Here the arrangement of the books differs somewhat from the Old Testament as used by Christians, however the actual writing of each book remains the same.

Torah

The Five books of Moses, in their Hebrew and English names:

  • Bereisheet ("in the beginning"), or Genesis
  • Shemot (“names”), or Exodus
  • Vayikra (“and God called”), or Leviticus
  • Bemidbar (“in the Wilderness”), or Numbers
  • Devarim (“words”), or Deuteronomy

The first eleven chapters of Genesis provide the account of the Creation, the history of God's early relationship with humanity, and the Deluge of Noah. The remaining thirty-nine chapters detail the account of God's covenant with the early Hebrew nation, led by the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (or Israel), and one of Jacob's children, Joseph. It tells the beginnings of God's chosen people, of how God commanded Abraham to leave his family and home to settle in the land of Canaan, and how the Children of Israel later moved to Egypt. The remainder of the Torah, beginning with Exodus, tells the story of the great Hebrew leader Moses, and of the Hebrews through their sojourn and slavery in Egypt, their escape from bondage, and their wanderings in the desert until they finally enter the Promised Land.

Nevi'im

The Nevi'im is the story of the rise toward, and ultimately reaching, the Hebrew monarchy; the sad period of anarchy and revolt leading to the division into the two kingdoms of Judah and Israel; and the prophets who judged the kings of both in God's name. It ends with the conquest of both kingdoms and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. The Minor Prophets are considered a single book in the Nevi'um; in Christianity they have been split into twelve separate books and named for their authors.

Ketuvim

The Ketuvim, or "Writings," contain lyrical poetry, philosophical reflections on life, and the writings of the prophets and other Jewish leaders during the exile in Babylon.

David has been named as the author of the Psalms; Solomon is believed to have written Song of Songs in his youth, the Proverbs in his prime, and Ecclesiastes during his old age. The prophet Jeremiah is thought to have written the aptly-named Lamentations at the beginning of the exile in Babylon. The Book of Ruth is the only biblical book that centers entirely on a non-Jew, a Moabite who married a Jew and became an ancestor of both David and Jesus Christ. Esther is unique as it is the only book in the Bible not to mention God. Moses is considered to be the author of Job.

The New Testament

The New Testament is a collection of twenty-seven books and letters, written by the early Christian community, and written primarily in Greek. The emphasis of the New Testament is the life, teachings, and gift of salvation from the central figure of the whole work, Jesus of Nazareth. These books are grouped into the following:

The Gospels

The Gospels contain the history of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles are a continuance of the Gospels, documenting the history of the early church, beginning immediately following Jesus' death and resurrection. Of the authors, only Matthew and John had met Jesus; they were among His disciples during His earthly ministry. Mark was a companion of Peter, and his gospel was the first to be written down, about A.D. 50. Luke is considered the author of both his gospel and the Acts.

Pauline Epistles

These are letters written to various early Christian communities by the Apostle Paul.

Paul has been attributed as the author of Epistle to the Hebrews due to internal evidence within the work, but several others, such as Barnabas, Luke, and Apollos are also claimed to be the author. The controversy, however, does not affect the genuiness of the epistle. (Unger, pg. 748)

General Epistles

Revelation

The Book of Revelation is the last work in the New Testament as well as the whole Bible, written close to A.D. 100 by the Apostle John during his exile on the Greek island of Patmos. Revelation is concerned with the condition of the Seven Churches of Asia before going deeply into a description of the last days prior to the beginning of the Millennial Age.

History of the Bible

Printers copy of a page from a Gutenberg Bible, printed in Germany about 1469.

The oldest books of the Bible are certainly the five books of the Torah and Job. In 1st Kings 6:1, Solomon is stated to have begun building the Temple "in the 480th year after the children of Israel were come up out of the land of Egypt". It had been established by scholars and historians that Solomon had begun building the Temple in the fourth year of his reign, or 961 B.C., making the date of the Exodus under Moses to have been 1441 B.C. During the following forty years Moses wrote the Torah and Job, completing them before his death at Mt. Nebo about 1400 B.C. According to Biblical scholar and historian Robert D. Wilson the Torah as it stands dates from the time of Moses, the five books constitute one continuous work, and was written by a single individual, Moses himself (Wilson, pg 11).

The remaining books of the Old Testament were written at various times since the death of Moses, with Malachi, the last Old Testament book, being written about 455 B.C. During this period each of the books was written and re-written on parchment or papyrus, with the editors taking great care in their work; a single Biblical book hand-written today can take weeks to complete. The older scrolls were disposed of by burial or systematic destruction when worn from normal usage; as a result, the oldest surviving examples of Biblical manuscripts are those which have been carefully preserved either by direct actions of people (such as monasteries), or by removal from forces of decay. Currently, the oldest surviving manuscripts are those found within the caves of Qumran in 1948 and known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating between 250 B.C. to A.D. 70; the complete Isaiah scroll of this collection dates to 150 B.C.

Around 200 B.C. the Septuagint, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament, was completed. This was due to the Hellenization of large areas of the Middle East after the conquest of Alexander the Great, making Greek the de-facto language for everyday communications and business. The Septuagint marks the first time in history that the Bible was translated into a foreign language.

The Apocrypha

The Apocrypha was written during the four hundred years between the last book of the Old Testament and the birth of Christ. The term itself comes from the Greek word apokruphos ("hidden" or "concealed"), and although they have an actual history and literary value, the fourteen books which make up the Apocrypha have been rejected as canonical by both the Jewish faith and most denominations of the Christian church due to historical, geographical, or literal inaccuracies; the teaching of doctrines which contradict inspired Scripture; and a lack of elements and structure which give genuine Scripture its unique characteristic (Unger, pg. 70). The Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, among others, include the Apocrypha in their versions of the Bible, considering them to be canonical. The following are the books which are most frequently referred to by the title Apocrypha:

Between 90-95 A.D. the Jewish Council of Jemnia revised the canon of the Old Testament, ensuring that the books involved conformed to the Torah, were written in the Hebrew language, written in Palestine, and written before 400 B.C. As a result, the Apocrypha was removed from the canon. [2]

Early New Testament history

In 1st Timothy 5:8 Paul quoted as scripture "the laborer is worthy of his hire." This line is found nowhere else in the Bible except Matthew 10:10 and Luke 5:7. In 2nd Peter 3:15-16, Peter classes Paul's letters with "other scriptures". Both lines are indicative of the writing down and general use of the New Testament prior to A.D. 60 (Halley, pg. 741-742). Spurious "gospels" which are known to have appeared by A.D. 100, make references to the New Testament. Clement of Rome, writing in his own letter to the Corinthians in A.D. 95, refers to Matthew, Luke, Corinthians, Hebrews, 1st Timothy, and 1st Peter (Halley, pg. 743).

The oldest surviving New Testament fragment of which there is a reliable date is the John Rylands Fragment (P52)[3] of the Gospel of John, dating from 117-138 A.D., just decades from when the Gospel was first written. The time span between the writing of the New Testament and the oldest surviving fragments are well under two hundred years. By comparison, Greek classics such as Herodotus, Plato, Euripides, and Homer have a time span well over a thousand years each between the date of the oldest known fragment of writing and the time period they were first written.

The Vulgate

Jerome, a Latin scholar deeply interested in the study of the Scriptures, completed the second edition of the Bible in the Latin language. The Vulgate was meant to replace the inaccuracies of the earlier Vetus Latina, the standard Bible of the early Catholic Church. Jerome had moved to Jerusalem in 382, and set to work on what eventually became a fresh translation of the Bible from the Greek of the Septuagint to translating the New Testament into Latin; from 390-405 he decided to re-translate his Old Testament directly from the Hebrew then in use by the Jewish community. The Vulgate had a marked influence in church history, and remained the standard Latin Bible in the Roman Catholic Church for centuries; such was the length of time in use that it was finally replaced by the Nova Vulgata in 1979.

Gutenberg's Bible

Johannes Gutenberg of Mainz, Germany invented the first mechanical printing press in 1448. His machine consisted of a large press which when cranked down, pressed a sheet of paper upon a platform in which were set thousands of inked metal letter typefaces (called "movable type"), set in place to read for a particular page. The first book in history printed by this method was the Gutenberg Bible, in the Vulgate version, of which 180 were printed, and approximately 50 survive today in varying conditions around the world. The Gutenberg Bible marked another first: Bibles could be mass produced to get into the hands of many more people at a lower cost than if they were printed by hand.

Tyndale

During the middle of the 16th century there was a need to get the Bible directly into the hands of the common man; prior to that the Bible was restricted to readings in the Church alone. The Reformers were a group of people who were shocked at the differences between what the Roman Catholic Church was practicing as opposed to what the Bible stated can or cannot be done (this was one of the causes of the Reformation). At great cost to themselves, the Reformers began the work of translating the Bible in the various languages of Europe; the printing press would ensure the newly-translated Bibles would be mass-produced.

William Tyndale was committed to getting the Bible in the hands of his English countrymen. Expressing open defiance of the Pope, Tyndale declared that if God would spare his life he would make it possible for even an ordinary farmer to know more about the Scriptures than the Pope. [4] Tyndale's translation of the New Testament was completed by 1525, by April, 1526, 6,000 copies were printed and delivered to England. Official opposition led to the destruction of most of them. Tyndale was arrested and charged with heresy for his efforts on May 21, 1536, and was executed the following year. His efforts at translating the Bible led to the Matthews and Bishop's Bibles, then finally to the King James Version, where ninety percent of the text is the result of Tyndale.

King James Version

The internet has increased the availability of the Bible world-wide. Shown here is a screenshot to E-Sword, a freely-downloadable Bible study program. [1] (Rick Meyers, 2007)

In 1601 King James I selected forty-seven of the ablest scholars in England to undertake the creation of a standard Bible in English, based upon careful translations of the Masoretic Text used by the Jewish community, and the best Greek translations (especially the Textus Receptus) then available. The scholars were divided into six committees in Oxford, Westminster, and Cambridge, with each scholar had dedicating himself to doing a portion of the Bible, often consulting each other to check the flow and harmony of the work in progress. The result was the 1611 King James, or Authorized, Version.

The effects of the King James Version were profound. Using less than 2,500 different words in it's vocabulary, this Bible was written in a poetic style matched by few. The work influenced the writings of Shakespeare. John Milton has numerous images taken from this Bible in his Paradise Lost. The direct style of writing caused it to be easily available to the common man. Poets and writers, such as Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and many others were deeply inspired by it. It had altered the course of English history, with England growing to a world power since the book's publication; when asked by a visiting dignitary what made England great, Queen Victoria pulled out her copy of the Bible and declared "This is the secret of England's greatness." [5]

Today, the Bible is available in many versions across the English-speaking world, and has been translated into nearly every language on Earth, including the current translation into a recently-created language from the fictional world of Star Trek, Klingon. [6] The past two decades saw the emergence of internet use; the creation of the Bible as a software program was inevitable, and several, such as E-Sword and Theophilos, are available at no cost with a wealth of Bible-study material as well.

Bible criticism

The traditional view of the Mosaic authorship of the Torah came under sporadic criticism from medieval scholars including Isaac ibn Yashush, Abraham ibn Ezra, Bonfils of Damascus and bishop Tostatus of Avila, who pointed to passages such as the description of the death of Moses in Deuteronomy as evidence that some portions, at least, could not have been written by Moses. In the 17th century Thomas Hobbes collected the current evidence and became the first scholar to conclude outright that Moses could not have written the bulk of the Torah. Shortly afterwards the philosopher Baruch Spinoza published a unified critical analysis, demonstrating that the problematic passages were not isolated cases that could be explained away one by one, but pervasive throughout the five books, concluding that it was "clearer than the sun at noon that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses…." Despite determined opposition from the Church, both Catholic and Protestant, the views of Hobbes and Spinoza gained increasing acceptance amongst scholars.

The Documentary Hypothesis

Having established the hypothesis that Moses had not written the Pentateuch, attention next turned to the question of who had. Independent but nearly simultaneous proposals by H. B. Witter, Jean Astruc, and J. G. Eichhorn separated the Pentateuch into two original documentary components, both dating from after the time of Moses. Others hypothesized the presence of two additional sources. The four documents were given working titles: J (or Yahwist), E (Elohist), P (Priestly), and D (Deuteronomist), each was discernable by its own characteristic language, and each, when read in isolation, presented a unified, coherent narrative.

Subsequent scholars, notably Eduard Reuss, Karl Heinrich Graf and Wilhelm Vatke, turned their attention to the order in which the documents had been composed (which they deduced from internal clues) and placed them in the context of a theory of the development of ancient Israelite religion, suggesting that much of the Laws and the narrative of the Pentateuch were unknown to the Israelites in the time of Moses. These were synthesized by Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918), who suggested an historical framework for the composition of the documents and their redaction (combination) into the final document known as the Pentateuch. According to contemporary Torah scholar Richard Elliott Friedman, Wellhausen's model of the documentary hypothesis continues to dominate the field of biblical scholarship: "To this day, if you want to disagree, you disagree with Wellhausen. If you want to pose a new model, you compare its merits with those of Wellhausen's model."[1]

The documentary hypothesis is important in the field of Biblical studies not only because it claims that the Torah was written by different people at different times - generally long after the events it describes. [2] It also proposed what was at the time a radically new way of reading the Bible. Many proponents of the documentary hypothesis view the Bible more as a body of literature than a work of history, believing that the historical value of the text lies not in its account of the events that it describes, but in what critics can infer about the times in which the authors lived (as critics may read Hamlet to learn about seventeenth-century England, but will not read it to learn about seventh-century Denmark).

Modern developments

The critical analysis of authorship now encompasses every book of the bible. Every book in turn has been hypothesized to bear traces of multiple authorship, even the book of Obadiah, which is only a single page. In some cases the traditional view on authorship has been overturned; in others, additional support, at least in part has been found.

The development of the hypothesis has not stopped with Wellhausen. Wellhausen's hypothesis, for example, proposed that the four documents were composed in the order J-E-D-P, with P, containing the bulk of the Jewish law, dating from the post-Exilic Second Temple period (i.e., after 515 BC);[3] but the contemporary view is that P is earlier than D, and that all four books date from the First Temple period (i.e., prior to 587 BC).[4]

The documentary hypothesis has come into question in recent decades, at least in the four-document version advanced by Wellhausen and refined by later scholars such as Martin Noth (who in 1943 provided evidence that Deuteronomy plus the following six books make a unified history from the hand of a single editor), Harold Bloom, Frank Moore Cross and Richard Elliot Friedman. The direction of this criticism is to question the existence of separate, identifiable documents, positing instead that the biblical text is made up of almost innumerable strands so interwoven as to be hardly untangleable — the J document, in particular, has been subjected to such intense dissection that it seems in danger of disappearing.

Although Biblical archeology has confirmed the existence of many people, places, and events mentioned in the Bible[7], many critical scholars have argued that the Bible be read not as an accurate historical document, but rather as a work of literature and theology that often draws on historical events — and often draws on non-Hebrew mythology — as primary source material. For these critics the Bible reveals much about the lives and times of its authors. Whether the ideas of these authors have any relevance to contemporary society is left to clerics and adherents of contemporary religions to decide.

Bible Versions

External links

Bible societies

Online, internet, and downloadable Bibles

Hebrew

Latin

English

Turkish

Others

Commentaries and analysis

Wikis

References

  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Dictionary, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1966).
  • Unger, Merril F. Unger's Bible Handbook, Moody Press, Chicago, IL (1967).
  • Halley, Henry H. Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI (1965).
  • Wilson, Robert D. A Scientific Investigation of the Old Testament, Sunday School Times, Inc, Philadelphia, PA (1926).
  1. ↑ Richard Elliott Friedman, "Who Wrote the Bible?,” HarperSanFrancisco, 1997 (2nd edition).
  2. ↑ Joel Rosenberg, 1984 "The Bible: Biblical Narrative" in Barry Holtz, ed Back to the Sources New York: Summit Books p. 36; Nahum Sarna, 1986 Understanding Genesis New York:Schocken Books p. xxi-xxiii
  3. ↑ Wellhausen adopted the idea of a post-Exilic date for P from Eduard Reuss.
  4. ↑ Although the bulk of all four documents date from before 587 BC, the strand of D known as Dtr2 dates from the following Exilic period.
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